One of the most fascinating presentations was given by Facebook's Marissa Gomez. Marissa manages the "micro-content" on Facebook's user interface -- the content that, if Marissa does her job well, you never notice!

In her presentation, Marissa talked about the challenges of creating & optimizing Facebook's UI content -- and gave an enlightening example about how it's done.

Hopefully you'll notice a pattern in this example -- one that will help you understand why you don't have the new News Feed yet.

Facebook Messenger: Iteration in Action

Facebook recently rolled out their mobile Messenger app, which lets you connect to & message people -- even if you're not Friends with them on Facebook.

Basically, if you have someone's number & you're not Facebook friends with them, you can still search for them & connect with them in Messenger.

One of the challenges Marissa's team faced was how to ask new users to add their phone numbers -- so they could be searched for.

They couldn't just ask users to add their phone numbers without any explanation. They also had to explain some changes to their FB settings that would happen when they added their number.

So they had to:

ask people to add their phone number

explain the change to their Facebook settings that would happen after adding the number

make the explanation crystal clear

make the explanation NOT scary

Not an easy task, by any means!

They eventually settled on this UI text:

Add Phone

People on Messenger can look you up with this phone number. The Facebook setting for who can look you you up will be updated.

Continue

“We were just striving to be simple & straightforward -- so it just says 'Add phone' and explains that people can look you up with this phone... The caveat here is that your Facebook settings might be changing," Marissa explained.

“We presented this around the company to some of the stakeholders, and the feedback was that this was scary. Some people felt like they weren’t sure what that meant & also felt like it was kind of bland & didn’t have a lot of personality.”

Back to the Drawing Board

So Marissa & her team went back to the drawing board with hopes of making the content "a little bit more fun & human."

The designer's response was to add "a cute little graphic on there". And Marissa's team updated the copy.

“Instead of just saying, 'Add phone', which sounds like a strong command, we reworded it into a question: 'What number can people reach you with?'" Marissa said.

"We were getting at why you would need a number in the first place, but were also kind of softening it a bit."

They ended up with this UI text:

What number can people reach you with?

The Facebook setting for who can look you up by phone number will be changed from Friends of Friends to Everyone

OK

Again, they sought opinions from as many stakeholders as possible.

“We presented this around the company & people were still kind of skeptical," Marissa said.

Breakthrough

“We realized that with a little bit of engineering work we could tell you what your current setting is for your phone number on your Timeline," said Marissa.

The team felt this would make Facebook users more comfortable with the changes.

“We added a line about how only you can see your phone number on Facebeook -- as a way to end it on a good note & remind them that they had some reassurances.”

They ended up with this UI text:

What number can people use to reach you?

You don't have to be Facebook friends to get in touch, so your Facebook setting will expand to let anyone who has your number look you up with it. Only you can see this number on Facebook

OK

"We got rid of some of the language about the setting changing from Friends of Friends to Everyone & all that kind of stuff -- because we realized that people probably set that setting 4 years ago when they first signed up for Facebook & haven't looked at it since -- and don't remember what the setting was called or what the different options were," Marissa said.

"We just wanted to be a little more clear about it, and more straightforward in saying it will expand to let anyone who has your number to look you up with it."

Graphics were further "softened" as well -- and a lock icon was added to indicate when your phone number was not visible on Facebook.

“After many weeks & many reviews, this is where it ended up," Marissa said, displaying the final product.

“We felt pretty good about this when it went out, but I think it’s also something that we can always iterate on.”

Facebook writers & designers are still conducting user testing on it -- and are always reading online reviews of Messenger in the App Store.

“We have a saying at Facebook: Done is better than perfect,” Marissa said.

This is a great example of Facebook's culture of iteration & optimization in action. And it seems to have let to a positive outcome: a higher converting install process for the Messenger app.

Subscribe vs. Follow: User behavior as Feedback

During the Q&A session after Marissa's presentation, Marissa had the chance to offer another example of Facebook iteration in action.

She was asked about an example of when everyone at Facebook thought they'd got something right, but were proven wrong by users.

For Marissa, the first thing that came to mind was the Subscribe button that was added to user Timelines in 2012.

“You could go to people's profiles, like one of the big guys from The New York Times -- Paul Krugman or someone -- and if you weren’t his friend, you could Subscribe to his posts.”

The Subscribe button was a "heavily vetted decision" -- but the wording on the button still came "down to the wire".

"Down to the wire they were kind of between Subscribe & a few other words, and they were like, we’re just going to go with this," Marissa said.

But after surveying users about a year later, Facebook realized that people weren't using the new product much.

"And that was a time for us to say, yep, we made a mistake... wrong word,” Marissa said.

So they decided to ask some users the following questions:

Do you know what this Subscribe thing is on Facebook?

What does it mean?

Are there other words you would use to describe it better?

“Basically it came out that everyone was using the word 'Follow' -- because that’s what has been the standard on every other app out there -- Instagram, Twitter, everything,” Marissa explained.